


Holding Onto You

by anirondack



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Allusions to Blue/Gansey, Insomnia, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Post-The Dream Thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5087572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anirondack/pseuds/anirondack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“If you aren’t busy tearing down small Virginian cities, what are you doing up?” Gansey asks.</i><br/><i>“Not sleeping,” Ronan says, which means </i>not dreaming<i>, which means </i>surviving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Onto You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkstarpirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkstarpirate/gifts).



> Written for the Raven Cycle Ship Swap. Prompt was for Gansey/Ronan insomnia and making out.
> 
> Title taken from song of the same name by twenty one pilots.

Gansey is out of grey paint.

He’s out of pretty much every color of paint, and he can’t make grey out of blue, lavender, and burnt orange, so the city of Henrietta is on hold for the time being.

Gansey pops a handful of Chex into his mouth, bag crinkling where it sits on top of the empty cereal box he was about to turn into some apartment buildings. He chews loudly, lying in the middle of Main Street with his head and chest poking out of the city limits, head rolled to the side, earbuds droning on, wondering if he could break open any of his pens and use the ink to paint the box. But the pens don’t have enough ink in them to cover even a side, and then the apartments would be black and not the red-tinged grey of things that should have been bricks but never quite made it that far in life. It’s too late to go to a hardware store, and the dollar store doesn’t sell much beyond off-brand watercolors that would run right off anyway.

Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible if the apartments were orange. It would be like he crashed the Pig into the entrance and they became one.

Gansey eats another handful of Chex and stares up at the wide, swooping ceiling. There’s some visible wiring that he should really get around to fixing or harassing Ronan to fix before the rain comes. He adds it to his mental list of things to do, which already extends longer than the square footage of the second floor of Monmouth. Then he adds buying more paint right up at the top. Under that, he adds finish Henrietta and then crosses it off, because when he finishes Henrietta, he’ll have to start making something else and he’s not sure the second floor has the room for an increase in scale.

Gansey groans quietly and rucks the hem of his sleep shirt up around his chest. The window unit blows tepid air over the city and it sort of reaches him, but it doesn’t do a lot of good. Hot air blowing over hot skin never helps in Henrietta; the exposure of Gansey’s sweat dampened skin to the air is cooler than the fan. His back sticks to the floor a little, unadhering when he moves and then adhering right back when he settles. He kicks one leg over the other knee, which is bent up in the air, jiggling his foot without really paying attention. Over the buildings, the window unit is a bit more useful, blowing air over Gansey’s bare shins.

He would never trade England for Henrietta but he misses the weather sometimes.

Gansey pulls his earbuds out, sits up, strips his shirt off, wads it up, and stuffs it under his head as he lies back down. The sound of whatever song is playing – he’d long since stopped paying attention – is tinny until he jams the earbuds back in and the music becomes whole again. He taps one bare foot against a post office, mouthing words he only knows the phonetic translations of. From Ronan’s laptop, he has inherited a huge amount of electronic and foreign music, a lot of which he finds he actually likes. His phone has been a cycle of French, Irish, German, and electronica for weeks, a pleasant change from the old classics and classical his father had listened to on long drives and ingrained in his system from a young age. The song he’s listening to has come up on his phone enough that he sort of knows the lyrics, even if he doesn’t know what they mean, and he mumbles along, slurring the words together because he doesn’t have to sing for anyone.

And that is how Ronan finds him, half naked and sprinkled with Chex crumbs in the middle of Main Street at three in the morning.

Gansey opens his eyes to see Ronan looking down at him with an expression halfway between perplexed and amused with Chainsaw perched on his shoulder. Gansey tugs an earbud out of his ear and says, “Hello there.”

“Are you pretending to be Godzilla?” Ronan asks. “You aren’t winning.”

“My strength lies in my stamina,” Gansey replies. “I’ll be up before the wreckage.”

Ronan snorts out a laugh and drops down to sit cross legged next to Ganesy’s head. Chainsaw leans her head over and peers at Gansey, and he stares back at her. She caws loudly and he flinches. Ronan strokes her feathers.

“If you aren’t busy tearing down small Virginian cities, what are you doing up?” Gansey asks.

“Not sleeping,” Ronan says, which means _not dreaming_ , which means _surviving_.

Gansey nods and reaches up to scratch his fingers over Ronan’s knee in sympathy. “We could go to the store,” he suggests.

“And get what? Fridge is too small to hold anything else.”

“I don’t know. A few hours of sleep? Can you buy that from a store yet?”

“Just chug Nyquil or something.”

“I’ll make myself sick.”

“A rainstorm the likes of which the city of Henrietta has never seen.”

“That’s disgusting,” Gansey says, but he smiles anyway.

Ronan looks a little bit pleased with himself. “Hold this.”

He carefully detaches Chainsaw from the strap of his tank top and sets her carefully on Gansey’s chest. Gansey brushes two fingers along her side as Ronan unfolds himself to lie down on the floor, head next to Gansey’s and body facing the other way. Gansey glances over at his sharp cheekbone and two-day stubble. “Your hair is getting long.”

“We can deal with it in the morning,” Ronan says. “Gimme.”

Gansey carefully scoops Chainsaw up so she won’t scratch his bare skin and passes her over their heads to Ronan. Ronan settles her in the middle of his chest and she pecks at his shirt.

“Why are _you_ still up?”

“I couldn’t fall asleep,” Gansey replies. “Thinking too much.”

“You should let Noah roll you a joint sometime,” Ronan suggests.

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“Might help.”

“I’ll dream of pizza rolls.”

“Speaking of, we’re out again.”

Gansey bumps his head against Ronan’s. “Dick. Your turn to buy.”

“Take my card or whatever,” Ronan says carelessly.

“Nope. You have to actually drive to the store and get them yourself.”

“I won’t. And then there won’t be pizza rolls.”

Gansey sighs. “I know you won’t.”

Ronan is quiet for a moment. “What flavor?”

“The pepperoni ones were good, let’s get those again.”

“Maybe.”

Ronan is staring at the ceiling, poking at Chainsaw’s foot with his thumb. She gives him a weary look, but allows it.

Gansey pulls on the headphone cable coming out of his phone and offers the discarded earbud to Ronan. Ronan takes it without a word and stuffs it into his ear. He closes his eyes and jiggles Chainsaw to the rhythm until she scratches his fingers.

“I have to admit, electronica is growing on me,” Gansey says. “It’s very easy to synchronize yourself with it, and it’s easier to focus on reading things without lyrics.”

Ronan’s chin raises a little, the only indication that he heard what Gansey said. Gansey can hear his foot tapping lightly against the ground, some six feet away from his head.

Gansey sets the silence between them build through another couple of sets, and then says, “Why won’t you sleep?”

“Can’t,” Ronan says.

“ _Won’t_ ,” Gansey repeats. “What’s up?”

Ronan mumbles something inaudible over the synthesizers.

“Hmm?”

“Same old shit,” Ronan snaps, louder this time. It doesn’t sound like what he said before. “Shit in my brain, shit in my body. It’s all fucking shit in here.”

Gansey reaches over and brushes his knuckles over the top of Ronan’s head. “I’m sorry,” he says honestly. “It’s not shit from out here.”

“You don’t have to feel it,” Ronan replies bitterly. “You don’t have to see it.”

Gansey knows better than to say that he wishes he could. They both know that he would shoulder any number of Ronan’s nightmares for him without a second thought, but Gansey can’t bring anything back to life, and he certainly can’t bring anything close to death. Ronan lives with the fear of the possibility of creation like Gansey lives with the fear of the possibility of destruction, but Ronan never finds it fascinating. He seems to find it sickening.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey says again. Ronan’s eyes are closed now, irises darting under thin lids. He looks like he’s asleep, but Gansey knows that he’s still far too tense to be anything but fully alert.

With a small amount of effort so as not to knock over any buildings, Gansey turns over onto his side. He switches his earbud to the ear that’s now pressed to the ground and curls one hand under his chin. Apart from his eyes, Ronan looks like a statue, chiseled from marble and frozen in time. Abruptly, Gansey is afraid he _will_ fall asleep, right here in the middle of the main room, and drag something back with him kicking and screaming. The night horror is fresh in his mind.

He doesn’t know why he reaches out to touch Ronan’s cheek, but Ronan jerks when he does and his eyes snap open. Chainsaw caws reproachfully as his body moves. “What?” Ronan asks irritably, turning his head to look at Gansey.

Gansey shrugs one shoulder. There isn’t a lot you can say to someone afraid of their nightmares when they have the potential to literally become real. “I’ll stay up with you,” he offers.

Ronan huffs, but he doesn’t look away. “You’d be up anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“Man, you look like shit, you should sleep,” Ronan says. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“I’m not babysitting you. That’s a daytime hours only job.”

Ronan snaps his teeth at Gansey’s fingers, which are still curled between them, but he doesn’t look too angry. “Go to bed, Gansey.”

“No.”

“Fine.”

Ronan looks away again. Gansey leaves his hand between them. The set ends and Gansey picks a new one, one that he’s heard thudding from the speakers in Ronan’s room before. The corner of Ronan’s mouth quirks up just enough to be noticeable before it flattens out again. Gansey closes his eyes and drifts through the bass until he thinks he can feel it wherever God and the universe dictate his soul should be. The air seems heavy with the rhythm, which is fascinating. He floats in it for a long time and sort of understands why Ronan likes electronica so much. The beat drives him forward and leaves little room to think about anything at all.

When he opens his eyes again, Ronan is looking at him again, something tired and aged and unhappy in his gaze. Gansey blinks at him and touches his knuckles back to Ronan’s cheek. Ronan doesn’t pull away this time.

“I just want to stop feeling– this,” he says quietly, indicating to himself with one hand.

Gansey doesn’t understand, but he nods.

“When’s the last time any of us felt good about something? _Anything_?” Ronan asks, more to himself to Gansey. “Do you even remember?”

Gansey does remember, just a few days ago when he put a mint leaf in Blue’s mouth and her lips brushed his fingertips and her face had flushed just dark enough for him to tell and she smiled at him.

He remembers coming face to face with Adam for the first time since Adam had _understood_ , understood whatever it was that Cabeswater had put inside him and how to let it out without bringing himself to his knees, and Adam regarded him with a small but easy smile and a quiet confidence in his eyes as he bumped his knuckles against Gansey’s.

He remembers in the present, which is just seeing but seems far away from him, looking at Ronan and bypassing his misery and just seeing _Ronan_ , lying next to him and alive and sober and quiet, not tearing through the streets around flashes of white paint and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“I feel good about you,” he says, because it’s true, in the direct and in the abstract.

Ronan’s eyes sharpen, like he’s looking for the joke, but it doesn’t come. “That makes one of us,” he says eventually.

Gansey shrugs one shoulder. “It’ll do until the morning. I told you I’d stay up with you.”

Ronan regards him carefully, and then tips his head up to brush his lips across Gansey’s fingers. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Gansey’s knuckles tingle. Ronan settles back down on the floor, head turned toward Gansey but eyes trained unseeingly on the wall. Gansey closes his eyes against the empty look they hold, and he keeps them closed until he feels Ronan’s breath fan out across his face.

Ronan is suddenly very close to him, their noses almost touching as they watch each other upside down. Gansey can barely see Ronan’s eyes, but he has a full view of Ronan’s lips as they say, “I don’t feel good about me.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I don’t understand why you do.”

“Call it a bad habit.”

Ronan laughs breathily at that, a laugh that doesn’t have the energy to be full. His teeth are sharp. “It’s better than smoking,” he offers.

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Gansey muses. “I never had to get cigarettes through their exams.”

“Maybe cigarettes don’t want to take their exams.”

“Maybe cigarettes are going to do it anyway.”

Ronan concedes the point with no more argument. They lie in silence a moment more until Ronan pulls his earbud out. Gansey mirrors him and pulls the headphone jack out of his phone to pause the music. “What were you thinking about?”

“Same old shit,” Gansey echoes. It’s not entirely true - his thoughts are laced with images of Blue, the smell of 300 Fox Way and the warm softness of her hands. When he thinks about Glendower now, he can’t help but think of her, and of Adam, and of Noah and of Ronan, always of Ronan, who has been following him on this quest longer than anyone. He remembers just turning fifteen, when his journal still had clean pages in it, teaching Ronan short phrases in Welsh and letting Ronan teach him others in Irish. ( _"What do you know about Welsh kings?” “Not much, what do you know about the cláirseach?"_ )

What different times those were.

“Remember when we were younger,” Gansey says softly. “When I stayed at the Barns or you stayed here, and I couldn’t sleep?”

Ronan does not tense beside him, but his relaxed form feels like a forced thing. “You never slept.”

“But you remember.”

“I remember.”

“I kind of miss it.”

There’s no ‘kind of’ about it. Gansey desperately misses being allowed to be so close to someone that he can share the same air they breathe, misses being allowed to touch someone without the weight of the world in his fingertips. He misses the rush of Ronan’s breath over his upper lip and the hand fisted lazily in the front of his shirt and the fingers tangled in his hair at four in the morning when the world starts to go sideways and everything is about to fall over.

“I do miss it,” Gansey corrects himself. “I miss that. I’m sorry it’s gone.”

Ronan looks at him strangely and Gansey has the odd feeling that Ronan is seeing under his skin. “It’s not gone,” he says finally. “It’s just been a while.”

“A long while.” About an eighteen month long while. A long enough while that Niall Lynch might not have seen, but Adam Parrish certainly hadn’t either.

“A while,” Ronan repeats. “Not ancient history. Not gone.”

Gansey’s chest feels tight and his stomach curls a little with possibility. “I miss it right now,” he says. “I’d like it tonight.”

“Would it help?” Ronan asks, like he’s trying to be utilitarian about the whole thing, like that’s not Gansey’s job.

“It wouldn’t help anything,” Gansey replies. “Or hurt anything. It’s just what I want.”

Ronan ponders that with his eyes slightly unfocused from Gansey’s jawline. His lips twitch a little, like he’s talking to himself in his mind and can’t quite keep it contained. Gansey doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Ronan says, “I miss it too,” and he lets it all out in a relieved sigh.

Gansey’s hand is suddenly cupping Ronan’s cheek, upside down where his wrist is blocking Ronan’s forehead and all but a sliver of Ronan’s eyes. They look exhausted, but they don’t look angry. “May I?” Gansey asks cautiously.

Ronan nods. “Yeah.”

Gansey tilts his head up past Ronan’s nose until he can press their lips together. Ronan has the taste of stale beer hanging around on his skin from around one in the morning, and the artificial mint of toothpaste under that, and the ever-present and pervading taste of Ronan under _that_. Ronan’s lips don’t part - they never do, not at first - but that’s okay, because this isn’t a secret roll in the Barns or some stolen moment between them in the office that will become Noah’s room. It’s old comfort and history and the promise that things that were okay before can be okay again.

Ronan’s hand reaches above his head to twist into Gansey’s hair and pull him a little closer. His fingers are stronger than they were the last time they did this, and Gansey can feel the threat of facial hair where there didn’t use to be and the way Ronan’s lips are somehow thinner than ever before, like everything about him has been dragged into sharp points. But that contradicts the Ronan he has now in front of him, who is soft and pliant, with his eyelashes fluttering against Gansey’s cheek and one hand cradling the back of his skull. Chainsaw gives a soft _kerrah!_ and lifts off of Ronan’s chest to perch on Gansey’s desk.

Gansey breaks away and sits up in the middle of Henrietta.

Ronan’s arm is splayed over his head, mouth slightly open in a question that hasn’t made it out yet, but Gansey just carefully shuffles out of the city to sit in what is probably the next county over and holds out a hand. Ronan eyes it, and then takes it, and Gansey pulls him up so he too is sitting, crossing his legs so his knees are up against Gansey’s and he has to slouch a little to reach Gansey’s eye level.

“That was really nice,” Gansey says.

Ronan gives him the absence of a frown more than a smile.

Gansey reaches out and curls his hand around the back of Ronan’s neck and pulls him forward.

Immediately, Ronan’s hands are on Gansey’s thighs, kneading lightly as he sinks into Gansey’s kiss. Gansey curves both of his hands around Ronan’s jaw, fingertips digging gently into the soft hollows behind points of bone, holding him still. Ronan makes a noise somewhere in his throat, almost impossible to hear over Gansey’s own heartbeat rushing in his ears, but it sounds content, or whatever passes for content in Ronan’s mind. It feels so familiar, even though Ronan’s face by all accounts isn’t the same one that Gansey touched when they were fifteen – appearances change, but not the way Ronan’s lips part and the way his mouth is hotter than anything Gansey has ever known because of all the unspoken words crammed into it, the way his first instinct is to bite Gansey’s lip rather than to lick it and then allow a nip in contrite return, the way that Gansey knows how to suck on his lower lip to make Ronan’s hands turn into fists and threaten to expose their secret. But there’s no one in Monmouth right now except for them and a dreamed raven and the memory of a ghost who has other places to not exist, so whatever moan or whimper or plea Ronan breathes out echoes between them and the high walls and no one else.

The Ronan of now has more desperation built up in him than the Ronan of two years ago. This Ronan pushes where the other Ronan believed more in the give and take of things. He pushes forward into Gansey’s space, letting his hands slide up Gansey’s thighs to rest on his hips, holding onto the waistband of his sleep pants tightly. He pushes until he can’t reach, and then he unfolds his legs and twists onto his knees and pushes more.

Gansey refuses to be moved. He tenses against Ronan’s weight and pushes back, giving Ronan something solid to run himself into. Ronan’s breath is coming faster already, and Gansey breathes in what Ronan breathes out like symbiosis, like the true two-headed creature they are. This is just another way of joining their bodies, the way they join when Ronan bumps his knuckles against Gansey’s or when their legs and elbows press together when they share a table at study hall or when Gansey’s hand closes around Ronan’s bicep because Ronan’s fists have more energy in them than the rest of the world combined. It’s been a long time since he’s felt their lives flow between them so easily like this - Glendower steals Gansey’s and dreams steal Ronan’s; Blue steals Gansey’s and Adam steals Ronan’s; obsession steals Gansey’s and creation steals Ronan’s.

They don’t steal from each other. It’s not that they never have – the dream Pig stares accusingly at Ronan whenever he gets in, and he spends a lot of time in the back seat these days – but they don’t need to, not in moments like these, when Glendower matters but not too much, when dreams are lurking but not pervading, when Bue and Adam are present in thought only and Gansey is only obsessed with Ronan’s tiny gasps and Ronan creates breaths of his own that shake through Gansey’s chest.

They aren’t frantic. They never forget to breathe. Ronan never shoves Gansey to the ground and climbs on top of him and tears his skin from his body and crawls inside. They coexist rather that creating an unholy union of parts that shouldn’t go together, and so they sit like that for long minutes, lost in each other, meaning lost in themselves.

It’s Ronan who pulls away this time, pressing his forehead against Gansey’s cheek and clutching at his sides. “I’m afraid,” he admits, so softly that Gansey would swear he was making it up if he couldn’t feel the vibration of sound against his skin, “of what I might bring back.”

“You won’t bring anything back,” Gansey tells him.

“I’m so tired.” Ronan doesn’t sound broken, but he does sound cracked.

“Go to sleep.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Gansey says. “I’ll wake you up if you start to dream.”

“How will you know?”

“I’ll know.”

He knows Ronan believes him. He doesn’t want to believe him, but he does.

“You should sleep in my bed tonight,” Gansey says. “I don’t want to crash on your floor, it’s disgusting.”

He only means the first part. The second part is just the necessary ribbing that Ronan needs in order to concede without guilt.

“If I bring anything back–”

“I’ll throw it out a window and run it over with the Pig.”

Ronan does laugh at that, but it sounds like the laugh of the desperate.

“You should sleep too,” he says, and those are the words of the desperate, still trying to put on a good face, like their voice doesn’t betray their need.

Gansey shakes his head. “I’ll read for a while. You sleep. If you snore, I’m waking you up.”

_If you start to die, I’m waking you up._

Ronan punches him in the side. It only hurts a little. “I don’t fucking snore.”

“You’d better hope not.” Gansey rubs his hand over the back of Ronan’s head. “We’re shaving your hair again tomorrow.”

“Fine. I’m suffocating you with a pillow until you pass out tomorrow.”

“That’s fine.”

“Good.” Ronan sounds like he wants to say something else, but instead, he extricates himself from Gansey, straightening his tank top, and then collapses on top of Gansey’s unmade bed. Gansey watches him as he pulls the covers out from under the mattress and wraps himself up in them like a messy cocoon. Ronan buries his face in the pillow and closes his eyes for about thirty seconds, and then the one that Gansey can see pops open. “You’ll wake me up if–”

“I will,” Gansey says. “Promise.”

Ronan nods, once, resolutely, and then closes his eyes again.

Gansey watches him for a while until Ronan’s breathing reluctantly evens out and his face relaxes and then tenses again. They look like normal dreams, normal nightmares, and Gansey knows what those are like, but Ronan probably won’t remember those in the morning. He holds out his arm and Chainsaw obligingly comes to rest near his elbow. She gives his hair an affectionate nip and he strokes the top of her head with the side of one finger.

Ronan dreams all night, but he doesn’t _dream_.

Gansey watches all night, over the edge of a worn out leather bound book, and he doesn’t mind the dark circles under his eyes in the morning when Ronan wakes up with empty hands and a solid look in his eyes and says, “I feel good about today.”

 

 


End file.
